


Hello Sweetheart

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Doctor Who Fusion, Doctor/River Vibes, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:00:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23172076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: “I’m the Scavenger,” she says at last, holding out her hand.  Her grip is firm.“Good to meet you, Scavenger,” he makes himself say.This will be her first, then.And he knows—because he has a sense of foreboding as heavy as that sonic screwdriver she’d given him the last time she’d seen him and which sits in his breast pocket just above his heart—he knows that this will be his last.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 78
Kudos: 234





	Hello Sweetheart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHEP <3

She never stops taking his breath away—not now, not ever.

And she’s the youngest he’s ever seen her when she steps out of that blue police box, her hair tied in three little buns at the back of her head.

_ You like it when I wear them like this,  _ she’d once told him, her lips beestung with his kisses. 

_ I like pulling them loose. Not the same. _

“Ben Solo,” he tells her, removing his helmet and extending a hand. A test for her. Does she know him yet? Or is this her first?

Her eyes flick back and forth between each of his, assessing, calculating.  _ Has she met a Solo before? _

But of course not. Her companion is one he’s never met before—a young man he’s heard her mention, usually sadly, usually wishing it hadn’t gone the way it had. 

“Finn Jackson,” he says, extending his hand to shake it. “Don’t mind her. She can be a bit lost on social graces.”

Oh, Ben knows that. 

“I’m the Scavenger,” she says at last, holding out her hand. Her grip is firm.

“Good to meet you, Scavenger,” he makes himself say.

This will be her first, then.

And he knows—because he has a sense of foreboding as heavy as that sonic screwdriver she’d given him the last time she’d seen him and which sits in his breast pocket just above his heart—he knows that this will be his last.

-

_ Ben knows how time works. _

_ Time is not linear. It swirls and twists, expands and contracts.  _

_ “If you want to think of it as a line, which you shouldn’t,” the Scavenger had told him, running a single finger along the length of his shaft, “Think about it much more like a caterpillar than a pencil. It’ll bunch up, turn itself around. It’s got a mind of its own, time.” _

_ “Lots of things have a mind of their own,” he’d joked as he felt himself swell slightly under her touch.  _

_ There’s something so sweet about her—and innocent. _

_ She doesn’t expect to be loved.  _

_ She has survived loss and war and such a very long amount of time, but love—she’s never been loved the way he loves her. _

_ He can tell because she makes this little noise of surprise every time he pulls her lips to his, like she doesn’t expect him to be real because she’s not used to being loved. _

_ He knows what that feels like. _

-

“What brings you here, Mr. Solo?” she asks him, looking around the Library. 

“Dr. Solo.” He doesn’t know why he corrects her. Except he also does. He wouldn’t have been busted out of that prison if it weren’t for her; he wouldn’t have gone back to school; wouldn’t have revisited his entire life if it weren’t for this Scavenger standing before him. If he’s a doctor, it’s because of her. “Archeological dig,” he says. “No one knows what happened here.”

She nods. She’ll have clocked that there aren’t any living souls here—the maintainers and librarians are all gone. The books live on, as books do, but life…

“It’s not even dusty here,” Finn says in wonder. 

“Of course not,” the Scavenger says quietly, looking around. “No humans, no dead skin cells, no dust. By and large,” she adds and he watches her make that face, the one that has just thought of at least nineteen different counterarguments to her statement, but she won’t go into the technicalities about why none of them actually fit the situation at hand. 

She usually only does that in bed, with him.

_ - _

_ “It’s you.” She looks at him with pure wonder in her eyes. He loves it when she looks at him with wonder. It’s usually a sign he hadn’t done something to annoy her last time. _

_ “Hello sweetheart,” he grins. She stiffens, unused to the greeting. Her hair is tied back in those three little buns of hers. She hasn’t learned yet that it’s a waste of her time wearing them because he will pull them loose if he kisses her. _

_ He doesn’t kiss her by way of greeting, the way he usually does. If she’d stiffened at him calling her sweetheart, then she might not know that kissing with tongues is a thing they do sometimes. Not yet. They will. Time is a caterpillar, and this one has tied itself in knots again. _

_ “How are you, Dr. Solo?” she asks him. _

_ “Doctor? Am I a doctor?” he asks her and his grin widens.  _

_ “Are you not a doctor?” she asks him sharply.  _

_ “Not at the moment. Not yet.”  _ Like how you don’t know how I feel inside you just yet. But you will. And I will be too.  _ He looks significantly around the prison cell, at the heavy bars that stand between her and him. “Will you grab that lever for me?”  _

_ “This one?” The Scavenger points to it. “What’s it do?” _

_ “Opens the door,” Ben replies. She pulls it and immediately the alarms go off.  _ Prisoner breaking out. Prisoner breaking out.  _ “Thank you, sweetheart,” and he pulls her into his arms again and this time, because he can’t help himself, he pulls her into his arms and kisses her. _

_ - _

_ “I was thinking ice skating on the surface of Hoth,” the Scavenger says as she sonics open his prison cell once again. “Or would you prefer sunshine?” _

_ Her hair is completely down, hanging loosely across her shoulders and when she steps into his arms, her lips are at his throat. “Alternatively we could stay here and give your guards a show,” she murmurs. _

_ “I could stretch my wings,” he says. “Besides—I don’t have handcuffs and would want them. Something to invest in.” _

_ Her eyes twinkle like stars up at him as she pulls him out of his cell, handing him a heavy winter jacket and grabbing that lever that they still haven’t gotten around to shutting off. _

_ Not that that would solve the problem. _

_ He loves her, his Scavenger, and her sonic screwdriver would put that lever right back on the circuit if they tried it. _

_ He wonders if they know that too, which is why they don’t bother. She’s too good to bust him out forever, after all. She always brings him back by curfew. _

-

She’s magnificent. She’s always magnificent. But he’s never seen her doing her thing without any inkling of who he is, what he’s been to her. She examines every book she finds, she ducks down to look under tables, climbs up the shelves to look into the corners of the ceiling. She’s impeccable. She’s wonderful.

“Don’t know what it could be,” Ben calls to her. “There’s no sign of struggle, no sign of—”

“Well, there wouldn’t be,” she says and there’s a dark delight to her voice—the one she always gets when she’s figured it out and what it is is dangerous.

“Oh?”

“They eat every part of the body,” she says. “So quickly you don’t even know it’s happening until they’ve cleaned every ounce of flesh from your skeleton.”

“Unless we do something, right?” Ben asks her. He can’t help but be proud of her, standing there on top of a bookshelf.

“ _ What _ will eat every part of the body?” Finn asks.

And the Scavenger’s eyes twinkle as she looks at Ben.

“I never give up without a fight.”

Indomitable—always.

-

_ “Who’s that?” _

_ The voice is so jarringly familiar that Ben’s stomach ties itself into a knot. Younger, yes, but— _

_ “An old friend,” The Scavenger replies.  _

_ “Hello, sweetheart,” he says the way he always does. Her hair is down, and long and when she kisses him, her tongue traces over his lips in a way that would ordinarily draw his attention away from anything else. But behind her, he hears,  _

_ “You greet all your friends that way?” _

_ “I don’t think they’re friends, Han.” _

_ “She just said—” _

_ “I think she meant like how you and I are friends.” _

_ “We’re not friends?” _

_ He breaks the kiss and looks past The Scavenger. _

_ There they are indeed. Younger—his mother’s hair is in twin looping braids that look almost like a pretzel, his dad’s wearing a less-beat-up-than-usual jacket.  _

_ He swallows. _

_ “Ben,” he says, extending his hand. Does The Scavenger just think Solo’s a common name? She can be a bit oblivious sometimes. It’s a product of her age more than anything else.  _

_ “Han,” his dad says. The grip is firm as he shakes his head. “This is Leia. How do you know our Scavenger?” _

_ “She got me thrown in jail,” Ben says after the briefest pause. _

_ “I also help you out of it every now and then,” the Scavenger says with an eye roll. _

_ “That’s good of her,” Han says. “She’s handy in a pinch, isn’t she?” _

_ Ben swallows. He remembers—vividly—the last time he saw his dad. I’m sorry.  _

_ “Yeah,” he says. “Handy.” _

_ He looks down at her, and she looks up at him and he sees that flash of recognition in her eyes.  _ Yes, this was for you.

Time heals all wounds, but also time isn’t linear. 

I’ll bend time for you.

-

He’s not as young as he once was and he feels it in his knees as they tear off through the Library. He’s not made for running anymore.  _ Old man,  _ the Scavenger had told him with a smile when she’d last seen him and he’d sort of hurt his back trying to pick her up. He’s not  _ that _ old. Though his hair is starting to be a bit salted, and there are lines around his eyes and lips to go with the lines that have always been on his forehead. Marks of worry, marks of wonder.

Still, he’ll run with her. He’ll catch up with her.

_ Running with the Scavenger—it’s unlike anything you’ve ever known,  _ his father had told him once years ago, before his father had known he was his father, and long after Ben had killed him. He had known that already then, but it hits him fresh this time as he pelts after her with Finn, trying to outrun the shadows that can and will and eat them alive.

His heart is hammering in his chest—adrenaline and not arousal this time, even if his eyes have definitely dropped down to the muscular curve of her ass as she keeps a few steps ahead of him. Adrenaline because is this how he dies? Running with her, not to her, running as fast as he can? The sonic screwdriver bounces against his chest.

It’s all clicking together, after all—the weird sadness in her eyes when she kisses him, how she holds him like she’ll never let him go.

He dies the first time she sees him.

And she’ll live the last time he sees her.

-

_ “They loved you,” the Scavenger tells him. _

_ “They didn’t,” Kylo growls at her. “You don’t abandon a child if you love them.” _

_ “They didn’t abandon you—you were stolen from them. Ben, don’t do this.” _

_ He snarls at her. He wants to scream, wants to yell. Of course it’s like this, his parents’ precious friend trying to save him from himself, from the monster he has been made, that he was always born to be. _

_ “You can’t save me. Nothing can,” he tells her. _

_ “I don’t believe that,” the Scavenger replies fiercely. “Six hundred billion million billion life forms in this universe and I don’t believe that there can’t be an iteration where you can't save yourself from this, Ben. Come home.”  _

_ She holds out a hand. _

_ He wants to reach for it. _

-

_ He thought he was her first love but he wasn’t. It’s crushing, really—realizing that when she was someone else, she’d loved someone else. She doesn’t talk about them. They have died. He’s glad of that—he doesn’t want to think about them holding her and certainly doesn’t want to think about himself as mortal. _

_ But he hears her talking about it one night, whispering to the TARDIS. “Sometimes I miss Revan. Do you, old girl?” It sounds like she’s admitting defeat when she says it. _

_ It’s three—maybe four—visits later when they’re running from Cybermen and he sees her lash out with her Sonic and scream Revan’s name that he wonders how they’d taken Revan from her. He tries not to compare, to wonder, if she’ll scream his name in rage after he dies too. _

-

“Where’d you get that?” she asks sharply when he takes out her sonic screwdriver and uses it to unlock a door. It’s her exact one, with its yellow sonic crystal, humming that noise he always associates with safety, with triumph.

He pauses and watches her carefully. Will she put two and two together? She’s so clever, but sometimes she’s remarkably obtuse.

Remarkably obtuse it is. “You gave it to me,” he says at last. “The last time I saw you.”

“The last—” but she cuts herself off and there she goes, he can see her eyes fizzling and spinning with their own light, their own Scavenger light.  _ Why would I have given that to you? Who are you to me? Don’t I need it? Why? Why? Why?  _ “So we’re friends then?” she asks at last.

“Scavenger!” Finn calls. “I’ve found something!” and they both turn to him. 

It’s a shadow, a hint of a shadow, tracing its way back through the Library and they’re both running flat out to follow it as it recedes as fast as it can. 

-

_ “We never gave up on you,” his mother whispers to him, her hand caressing his face, stroking a thumb along the scar he’d gotten when he’d killed his dad. “Not ever. We wanted to find you, Ben.” _

_ It feels like a curse, this name. He’d thought he’d be free of it once.  _ Kylo _ , he’d called himself. _

_ In the corner the woman, the Scavenger, shifts. It’s like she’s trying to be as unobtrusive as possible but can’t quite help herself.  _ I told you,  _ she seems to say.  _ Listen _. _

_ “No one’s ever really gone,” his mother whispered to him and he feels something inside of him fracture. Or maybe unfracture. Something cracks and is different and when he begins to cry, he wonders if this time it’ll actually be relief. _

-

“Finn Jackson has left the Library. Finn Jackson has been saved,” the computer announces primply to the empty room.

And the Scavenger lets out a howl of rage, like when he’d killed his father. 

The Scavenger can’t bear to lose anyone—especially not those who run with her.

-

_ “Who was Revan?” _

_ He asks it of his father, before his father knows he’s his father. _

_ Han Solo looks at him sideways and sighs. “She doesn’t talk about him much. It was before she regenerated. I think he got locked away in another dimension.” _

_ “So he’s still alive?” Still alive but she can’t have him. _

_ “Something like that. I think. Leia and I haven’t been able to work it out. She doesn’t talk about her past much, the Scavenger.” _

_ No, she doesn’t. _

_ She wouldn’t. _

_ Why dredge up her pain when she wants to lock it down? She doesn’t want to remember the painful, only the good, but sometimes they’re so intertwined it’s better not to touch them. _

_ At least for me, when I’m gone, she may see me again. She’ll live in hope of that, won’t she?  _

_ He’s never encountered her when she hasn’t been delighted he’s there—delighted and more than a little relieved. _

_ Last time wasn’t the last time. _

_ He gets that. _

_ He feels that way too. _

-

_ She arches as she comes, her nipples tight and dark on her chest, her two hearts beating so fast he can feel her pulse through his dick. Two hearts. Two hearts. He thinks that’s why she can run as fast as she can. Her two hearts give her the stamina of nothing else he’s ever known. _

_ Her chest is heaving as she lets her eyes drift open, as she trails fingers down his chest, as he watches her come back to herself. There’s something gleaming there that he’s never seen before and for a moment, he thinks she’s going to give him the best blowjob of his life. _

_ But no, she reaches over sideways, digs around in her jacket pocket and hands him her screwdriver. _

_ “I want you to have this,” she says. _

_ He gapes at her. _

_ “You cannot be serious.” _

_ “Deadly,” she replies. “It’s a gift. I want you to have it. To celebrate your degree.” _

_ He raises his eyebrows. “This isn’t some sort of Time Lord marriage thing, is it?” _

_ She rolls her eyes. “As if I haven’t already married you.” _

_ “Twice,” Ben points out. “Third time’s the charm.” _

_ She bends down and kisses him and presses the sonic into his hand. _

_ “I love you.” _

_ “Till my dying day,” he replies and he begins to rock his hips back against hers and she buries her face in his neck as he starts to lose himself—again—to her completely. _

-

_ “The Daleks don’t care about you,” the Scavenger yells at him. “They don’t care if you live or die. I do, Ben! We do! Snoke just wanted a human who would hurt—” _

_ “You,” he snarls. He knows this. He knows he’s a weapon, a dog on a leash. Who better to hurt the Scavenger than the child of her former companions? A boy touched by time, a man trained to exterminate? “You think I don’t know that?” _

_ “Do you want to hurt me, Ben?” she asks slowly.  _ I don’t want to hurt you.

_ But the Scavenger is a liar. Every Dalek knows that. She lies about love, and mercy, and forgiveness. These are things that make her weak, things she extends to others, but never to Daleks. _

_ And Ben’s not a Dalek. _

I’m not Ben, _ he thinks angrily. He strikes the scar tissue from the shot Chewie had blasted into him after he’d killed his dead. It doesn’t hurt anymore—not healed but not enough to make him feel the pain he needs to make himself angry. _

_ Suddenly he feels empty. _

_ He wants to be cared about. _

_ He looks at her, and thinks he sees it—all those lies Snoke warned him about. Mercy and forgiveness and— _

_ He frowns. _

_ She’s wearing her hair differently from the last time he saw her.  _

_ Her eyes seem less old. _

_ And they seem to see him. Really see him. _

-

Because of course she would do something like this. She’d always had a manic, heroic bent. 

“It will burn through your regeneration. You’ll  _ actually _ die,” Ben growls at her.

“But they’ll  _ live _ , Dr. Solo. They’ll  _ live _ . Sometimes people need to live.”

_ And what will I do if you die? _

He knows down in his heart, though, that she can’t die. He won’t let her die. He won’t let his memories disappear because she’ll never have lived them. So  _ what _ if she can save everyone from where the Library had stored them. So  _ what _ if she is dead, and gone, and he can never hold her in his arms again.

He stands there trembling as she begins to hook herself up to the computer mainframe. 

He fishes her sonic screwdriver out of his breast pocket.  _ Why did you give me this?  _ he wonders. 

But he leaves it on the desk as she settles into the connection and he closes his eyes when he hits her over the head with a book.

Carefully, he moves her away from the computer.

Carefully, he drags her body across the way from him. 

Carefully, he connects himself from the mainframe.

_ Your first, my last. It was always going to be this way. _

_ That’s why you gave me the screwdriver. _

He hopes she’ll open her eyes one last time before his heart stops. He wants to see her eyes, one last time.

-

Everybody knows that everybody dies.

It’s the fact of life, that it ends. Life and death, they balance one another out.

You can’t save everyone—unless you’re as stubborn as the Scavenger.

She saved him, somehow. He doesn’t really know how. One second he’d felt every ounce of electricity that machine could muster pulsing through him, the next his eyes were opening and he was in the grassy green clearing that was the computer mainframe, a memory of a memory.

He looks up at the depiction of the sun and smiles and closes his eyes. He doesn’t feel warm, but that’s all right. He’s alive.

He imagines her running—running as fast as she can, burning glorious determination on her face as she does whatever it was she’d worked out over hundreds of years to save him. Whatever it was, it had haunted her from the moment he’d died until the moment he’d lived again, whispering at the darker corners of her memories along with everyone else she wanted to save, but didn’t know if she could. 

But she had. 

She had saved him.

And if he’s still a memory of a memory—well. Well he’s sure that nothing will stop her until she’s brought him back. Fully back. Into his arms back. She’s remarkably stubborn, that Scavenger of his.

-

Time is a caterpillar. It is not, nor has never been, linear. 

It doesn’t pass the way it has passed before when he is locked away in a computer memory. But maybe that’s for the best, because it means time doesn’t pass at all.

And when he feels something, warmth first, maybe, or just that light enters his eyes a different way, he smiles and there she is, her hair longer than he’s ever seen it, her eyes older and when she throws herself into his arms—

“Hello Sweetheart.”

Yes. Everybody knows that everybody dies. But sometimes, people live.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed <3 when i'm not hiding from social media, you can find me [here](http://linktr.ee/crossingwinter)


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